"Europe is our playground for now," said Oliver Winter, CEO of A&O Hotels & Hostels.
In an interview with "The Upgrade: EMEA Hospitality News," Winter said the Germany-based hotel and hostel chain has room to grow its presence in Europe to a further 15,000 beds over the next three to five years.
A&O now has 43 hotels/hostels in 30 cities in 11 European countries, with a total of approximately 30,000 beds. In October 2025, the firm acquired the DoubleTree by Hilton, Docklands Riverside, which will be A&O’s first location in London.
“We are very proud after 25 years to be coming to London,” Winter said. “Three different buildings, guest buildings with a connector building.”
He said the London hotel will be a test case for a “new type of hotel” for A&O and perhaps the debut of a new brand.
“A luxury or premium hostel brand,” he added.
A&O this year appointed Kristina Golik as the brand’s director of operations and integration, a new role designed to strengthen service standards and oversee the integration of new locations, Winter said.
Sustainability in Germany remains a hot topic that is not going away and is only becoming more important, he said.
In 2015, the firm’s management started to question what exactly being green is and what does carbon footprint entail, he said. When that conversation started, each guest had a 25-kilogram carbon footprint, but over the last 10 years, innovation, staff commentary and guest feedback have seen that reduced to less than four kilograms.
“It is 3.6 or 3.7 kilograms overnight, an 80% reduction from where we are coming from,” Winter said, adding he still believed being greener allows access to best debt and terms that are more advantageous to operations.
For more from Oliver Winter on such topics as starting his hostel firm as a liquor store and how it subsequently grew into Europe’s largest hostel chain, listen to the podcast embedded above.